


The Not So Temp

by wineandwhiskey



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Man of Steel (2013)
Genre: Emotional Baggage, F/M, Love, Past Abuse, Relationship(s), Self-Discovery, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-06-02 18:43:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6578083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wineandwhiskey/pseuds/wineandwhiskey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex Luthor is confused when he meets a girl who is temping for LexCorp. He has ten weeks to figure out what she means to him, then she'll be gone. Lex/OC</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I felt inspired by Lex Luthor, and this was born. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I am writing it.

*Ring Ring* *Ring Ring* 

There goes that damn phone ringing again. She once again picks up the old school office phone, complete with a spiral cord that is forever tangled, and brings it to her ear.

“Thank you for calling LexCorp, how can I assist you?”

“This product I received is broken.” An angry man begins to rant.

“I’m sorry sir, what item did you order?” she asks, playing with the cord between her fingers.

The guy proceeds to rattle off the fifteen digit lot number of the product. 

“Okay sir, but what is the item?” responding in a patient voice, she also quickly scrawls down the number. 

“Well don’t you know?” the guy exclaims. “I know you all have computers, can’t you look it up?”

She sighs and answers the annoyance on the phone. “Yes, but it would save us both a lot of time if you just tell me what broken product you have.” She reasons.

The guy then hangs up. 

Slamming down the receiver, she sighs and turns to the woman working at the desk next to her.

“What is it with these idiots? Are they not aware of the product that they specifically called to complain about?” 

Turning to her, the woman gives her a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry Emma, being the phone operator is tedious work.”

“I’ve come to the conclusion that customers are stupid wherever you go! I figured I would be able to leave that behind at my retail job, although in a way I guess this is also retail. Once you take away the inventing part of this place, it’s all selling."

The woman named Paula shuffles a stack of papers as she lets out a dry laugh. “It’s a pity really.”

Emma opens up an email and address it to the maintenance department. “I’ll shoot maintenance an email with the lot number of a possible defective product, just in case there is actually a problem.”

*Ring Ring* The dinosaur phone goes off again. She wonders why a company as advanced as LexCorp would still have a phone from the last century, but just accepted the fact that all offices probably did it for the ambiance factor. This is what has always been done, so why change it? Emma once again answers.

“May I speak to Abigail Johnson?”

Thankful she can transfer this woman away, she tells the woman to please hold, and dials the proper extension. Pushing the page button on the phone, she tries to get in contact with Abigail. 

“Abigail you have a call on line seventy eight.”

Nothing.

Two minutes later, she repeats the statement only to be met with more dead air. “Not this again.” She complains, familiar with the tendency of the higher ups to ignore their calls.

“Emma I think she is in the R&D board meeting.” Paula calls over to her.

*Ring Ring* Due to the call being left unanswered, it has returned to the main line. “My apologies, are you still holding for Abigail Johnson?”

“Yes I am, and it is very urgent, my time is very valuable and I cannot wait all day.” She says, a bit agitated. “I’ll never buy in bulk again if I am not connected immediately!”

“I’m sorry, one second I’ll get her for you.” Emma promises. She pushes a few buttons, transferring the call to the cordless phone on her desk that is rarely used. Emma didn’t know why it was there either.

“The hell with this, what floor is the meeting on?” She turns to Paula.

“The twelfth” Paula answers, furiously copying something down off her computer screen.

Emma points to the phone. “Watch the calls, I’ll just bring the phone right to her.”

Heading to the elevator, cordless in hand, she steps inside pressing the twelve button. “This is ridiculous.” She mutters. Luckily LexCorp has better elevators than phones, and she shoots up to the twelfth floor in no time. The doors open to reveal a spacious conference room, and she saw around seven people inside, including Abigail, who was sitting closest to the door.

She opens the glass doors to the conference room, unaware of the six others, including the CEO, who turn to look at her. 

“So the battery function of this..” a member of the board meeting explains.

Emma walks right over to Abigail and extends her arm holding the cordless. “You have a call.” She states, waiting for her to take the phone.

Abbey looks confused. She has no idea how half of them even get these jobs. “What do I..” the well esteemed employee begins to ask.

Emma makes a gesture of putting the receiver to her face. “You just talk.” She explains, not knowing how to make it any simpler. 

“Hello.” Abbey begins to take the call. “No that isn’t necessary.” She looks a bit alarmed. “We can work something out.” She pauses listening. “Okay I’m sorry you didn’t receiver all the drives. How many were requested? Fifty thousand, and you received thirty thousand. We will remedy that for your company immediately. Expect a delivery in the next forty eight hours.” She hands the phone back to Emma, who turns right back around and leaves the room, as a curious CEO watches her.

__

 

The day started off like any other. He rolls out of bed after a fitful night plagued by nightmares and traumatic experiences, stops for a cup of coffee, and heads over to LexCorp to see if anyone came up with anything intelligent today. 

As soon as he walks through the door, Mercy is fast walking behind him, reminding him of the conference in Research and Development at twelve thirty. “Great.” He whines. “I can’t wait to see what these rocket scientists have prepared for me.” He turns around to look at her. “It’s so ironic how sarcastic I’m being right now, seeing as half that department are literally rocket scientists.” 

“I’m sorry sir.” Mercy replies in a monotone voice. She is so done with his complaining. 

Lex makes his rounds around the different offices to see if anyone was making progress on any of the several projects LexCorp was currently innovating. Short answer, no. At this rate, nothing would be finished until 2017.

Deciding he was done with these imbeciles for now, he stops for a quick game of basketball. Okay a two hour game. 

He’s in the middle of making one of his foul shots, when Mercy comes barging in. “Mr. Luthor your meeting.” He sighs, turning around and throwing the basketball in the air behind him. To everyone’s awe, it makes it in the basket.

“Okay people!” he claps his hands, sauntering in. “What do you have for me today? Hopefully something besides the latest gossip from Reverse Logistics.”

One brave middle aged man in a wrinkled black suit stands up. “I made a blueprint for a new efficient device, which has the capability to store ALL of your information; music, documents, pictures, anything!” he explains excitedly. 

Lex face palms, rubbing his temples with his thumb and middle finger. “That’s called a flash drive.” He takes a deep breath. “They have that already.” He tells the guy exasperated. “Now sit down.” 

The poor man looks ashamed as he slumps back into his seat.

“Anyone else?” he questions, already tired of this conference. 

Another employee, Lacey, stands up with her own blueprint. “Abbey and I were collaborating on this idea of an extended phone battery. Not the best name, but we’ll think of one. With advanced wiring technology, the battery function of this device has the potential to last…”

The door clicks open.

A curly blonde girl, wearing a navy blue tank top and a black pencil skirt walks in, holding a cordless phone.  
She walks over to Abbey, paying no mind to the meeting she has just interrupted, and holds the phone out to her. “You have a call.” She states flatly. 

Lex is embarrassed at how much confusion is on the woman’s face as she stares at the cordless. “What do I..?” 

“You just talk.” She explains. 

Abbey takes the phone and speaks to a client who sounds like they were missing a huge portion of their order. A bulk buyer too, better make sure they fix it. Abbey tells them she will make arrangements to have the missing drives delivered to them. 

She hands the phone back to the blonde, who takes it and walks back out of the room, not sparing anyone else a glance. I doubt she even noticed I was there. I’m not too thrilled about that.

“Who’s that?” I ask the room. The way these people gossip, somebody is bound to know. I had never encountered her before. She seemed quite intriguing, interrupting the meeting, and being unaware of my presence. It’s a good thing she did too, it possibly prevented us from losing one of our bulk buyers.

The guy in the wrinkled suit answers. “The temp.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lex and Emma have their first interaction....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the delay, but I just finished up with summer courses so now I am free to write at will! I hope the formatting is in top shape, still getting used to this beta mode, usually I can just attach the file but hey this is something new. I hope you enjoy, feel free to leave a little comment and let me know what you people think.

Storming down the hallway, she re-enters the elevator, and angrily pushes the fifth floor button. It rapidly descends and deposits her back on her floor. Walking back to her desk, she connects the phone back on the dock and sighs, turning to Paula. “You know something, it seems the smarter people are, the less common sense they have.” 

Paula nods. “Must be too much concentration. Once they do their jobs, they spend the rest of their time with their head in the clouds.”

“My dad did a job for a guy like that. He was a brain surgeon, and once he left the ER, he was spaced out. The guy buys a brand new set of expensive golf clubs, and leaves them out on the lawn. The sprinklers go on and ruin them. Absentminded!” Emma laughs. “It’s like he fries his brain with complicated surgery, and can’t concentrate after that. His wife got so frustrated with him.”

Paula belts out laughing, shaking her head. “I think I’ve heard everything now.”

“Please, that’s not even the tip of the ice berg. Do you want me to get into those years I worked in retail?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Oh well, at least we get to keep that bulk buyer.” 

Paula suddenly wheels her rolling chair over to her, lowering her voice. “What did you think of Mr. Luthor?” 

“Huh?” Emma looks at her confused.

“Lex Luthor! The CEO? Didn’t you meet him in the meeting?”

“Honestly I wasn’t even paying attention. I just passed the call and got out. I figured I had interrupted enough.”

“That’s too bad. I would love to meet him.” She gushed, her admiration for the man clear by her expression.

“Then do it.” She said, nonchalantly.

“How? I don’t have an excuse to talk to him. What am I going to say? We are out of copy paper?”

“Have some confidence Paula!” she exclaims. “You have plenty of brilliance to offer this company.” She pushes her chair back, standing up. “I’m going to take a trip to the food truck, and get some of that clean eating.” She joked referring to the vegan menu. “Want anything?”

“No thanks!” Paula shoots her a horrified look. “I have to have my meat.”

“Emma laughs. “I actually am enjoying it. I’ve always considered going vegetarian, but I’m too lazy for that, and I cannot cook for shit. But now I have vegan food right here, and it’s free! Ten whole weeks of endless vegetable combinations. That should amount to all of my meatless Mondays for the year.”

“Not for me, meat is a necessity at every meal.”

Emma puts her hand to her chest in mock offense. “Well fine then you carnivore.”

Making her way to the truck, she opens up her aviators, and pushes them on her face. The weather outside is beautiful, it’s warm, the sun is shining, and there is a slight breeze to stave off the humidity. Looking around at the spacious property, she observes that the lack of trees anywhere would make this location perfect for tanning.  
Waiting patiently in line, she reads the menu that’s plastered on the side of the mobile restaurant. Today’s special is an eggplant sandwich with a side of zucchini fries. As she makes her way to the front of the line, she observes the worker inside, rushing to keep up with the demand for his product. Walking to the window, the large sweaty guy reaches down, handing her a plate. “Thank you.” She says, flashing him a smile.

Starting her walk back inside, she starts eating the eggplant, keeping a tight grip on the napkin that began to get tousled around by the gentle breeze. 

She reaches the huge set of double doors, and shoves the rest of the zucchini fries in her mouth, quickly chewing. Chucking the paper container in the trash, she swings open the doors, greeted by an obnoxious alarm blaring and flashing lights in the hallway. 

Everyone was gathered around a door to one of the science labs. “Emma!” Kevin, the manager from Reverse Logistics calls over to her. There’s a man with long strawberry blonde hair, and a shirt with a monkey on it next to him. 

‘Man, this place really let its dress code go.’ She thinks. 

“Is everything okay Kevin?” she responds, walking over to where the two men are standing.

“Can you get this door open? We’re locked out of the lab, because my lanyard fell out of my pocket.”

“Why did I ever tell you that story about my dorm room? I’m not a locksmith you know, no guarantees.” She sticks out her hand. “Credit card?”

He gives her a confused look. 

“For the door..” she says in an exasperated high pitched voice. 

The guy with the long hair reaches into his pocket and hands one to her, placing it in her outstretched palm. She grabs the door handle and jams the card under the door lock, pushing up. “It’s all in the tumblers.” She mutters, fiddling with the handle. It clicks and she pushes it open. “Here you go.” She smiles at the guy in the monkey shirt, and hands him back his card.

‘Damn, black American Express, they must pay well here.’

“Thank you so much Emma.” Kevin beams at her, grateful she was able to get him out of this entire mess. “I am so sorry Mr. Luthor, it was an accident. I had to run out and get sodium hydroxide, and these pants fit very badly. I didn’t notice the keys fell out. I’m also sorry I left the experiment unattended, and caused an incident. It’s just that I am so close to this new formula.”

Emma turns to look at the CEO of this company. He was not anything like she expected. She doesn’t know many famous people here, since she is originally from Maine. Judging from the rumors she has heard about him, she expected him to have a more domineering appearance and personality. 

Mr. Luthor waves off Kevin’s apology. “No harm, no foul!” he chirps. “We were just lucky you have a clever little lock-picker around!” he exclaims, turning back to Emma. “Hi, hello, Lex. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He extends his hand to her. 

“I’m Emma.” She responds, smiling at him. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“I haven’t seen you around here before.” Lex states.

“Well I just started working here around a week and a half ago. The temp agency sent me.”

“Well welcome aboard!” Lex chirps. “Kevin.” He acknowledges, before walking down the hall, back to whatever he was doing before the alarms went off.

“I owe you one.” He turned to Emma.” I thought he was going to explode on me earlier.”

“No problem.”

“I can treat you to lunch if you want, as a thank you.” Kevin offers.

“I appreciate the offer, but I literally just ate lunch. Maybe some other time.” She once again makes her way to the elevator, and goes back to her floor.  
The other office workers don’t pay much attention to her as she walks through the room, and she stops behind Paula’s desk. “So I ended up meeting him after all.”

She needed no clarification. “How is he?” She perks her head up, loving the opportunity for some gossip in the otherwise dull office.

“Not at all like I expected.’ She admits. “He was wearing a t-shirt with a monkey on it, and jeans. That doesn’t exactly scream CEO. If anything I would have thought the older guy in the slightly creased suit was him, if I had to guess from that board meeting.”

“I keep telling you that this place has a more casual dress code.” Paula reasons. “LexCorp is one endless casual Friday. “

“Still, I would never show up to this fancy place like that!” The temp agency drilled presentation into her head. If an employee wishes to be taken seriously, they must look the part. Just look at the CEO for example, she would have never guessed he was one. A professional appearance, coupled with a professional attitude paved the way for better, and more permanent jobs.

Emma prided herself on that. Her professional demeanor and work ethic is how she ended up getting better positions, as opposed to her unreliable co-workers at the agency. Her last temp job was two months as a receptionist at a vet’s office, while the regular employee was out on maternity leave. It was fun to play with the animals, and learn about all the different breeds of dogs, but being a receptionist wasn’t exactly interesting work. Although it seemed like that was going to be what she would be stuck doing here as well. Even though she technically was serving as a float, and filling in wherever they need her, they didn’t seem to need her for much of anything around here. She honestly had no idea why they requested a temp in the first place. But they put her in the accounts receivable/payable office to work as a receptionist, possibly just to be polite. 

The office environment was another reason she felt the need to dress up. The temp agency would flip out if they ever found out she had worn sneakers or jeans to this place. Regardless of the fact that the CEO dressed like an ad out of American Eagle. Her mind wandered back to the long-haired businessman. It was surprising how little she knew about him. Since her move to Metropolis four months ago, she figured she would have come across more information on him, but the only exposure she had was a brief information packet on the history of LexCorp from the agency, pieces of gossip and rumors from trash TV, and whispered words on the city’s streets. The only consistent fact that she had pieced together was that most people didn’t like him. They saw him as weird, eccentric, and otherwise abnormal. People simply tolerated him and put on a false air of politeness either because he was their boss, or they hoped to gain something from his acquaintance. Emma thought that was horrible. Everybody deserved a chance to be accepted for who they were as a person, not their status, or any favors they could bestow on those who they chose. She doubted she would have any other contact with him in the brief time she was here, but if she happened to come across him she was determined to be genuinely friendly, and give him a chance. She could honestly see no reason not to. Sitting back at her desk, she turned on her computer, and got ready to finish the rest of the day’s work.

__

Lex tapped his pencil on his desk in frustration. He was attempting to decipher one of the various algorithms he was working on, but he couldn’t concentrate. For some reason his thoughts kept wandering back to the blonde temp who had unlocked the door. He couldn’t believe that someone who he had one brief interaction with was taking up so much of his thoughts. Two hours later, and he still couldn’t get her out of his head. This is ridiculous, and is starting to affect his work. What was it about her that had him so fascinated? Maybe it was the fact that she was one of the few people he had met who he could have a normal conversation with, however brief. Most people Lex conversed with have this glazed look in their eyes, which he knows means they are not paying attention to a single thing he’s saying, and are waiting for him to finish. Usually he ends up talking longer than necessary in those cases, just to be spiteful. But this Emma girl, she actually looked at him like he was a normal person, and actually seemed to care about what he had to say. He relished that feeling, basked in it, hoping it would never end. He had always tried so hard to get that acceptance from others, especially his father. But nothing he ever did could achieve that. The first way he tried to get his father’s acceptance was through academics. He finished high school at fourteen years old, at the top of his class. But his father just shrugged, and said he would be unable to attend his graduation because it conflicted with one of his business trips. No chance of rescheduling that! Eventually he just gave up, and resigned himself to being looked down upon by others, which caused him to manipulate and use them without guilt. They didn’t like him anyway, so what did he ever have to lose. It may seem like an unfortunate way to live, but Lex has never known any different. 

Throwing his pencil down, he decides to take a walk up to the roof for some air. Maybe it will clear his head, and he can finally put her out of his mind. He grabs his blue stress ball, and heads for the elevator, pushing the top floor button. 

The elevator doors open, revealing the bright blue sky, and the many buildings and cars below. He steps out, walking over to the edge, and takes a few deep breaths. It’s calming being on top of the LexCorp tower. Here he’s above everybody else, nobody is higher that can look down on him. Being on the roof is the closest to peace he can find in his life, so he typically comes up here to try to relax. After a few minutes of speculation, he decides he has no choice but to do his best to forget about the encounter. Obviously it was a one-time thing, and if he tried to pursue anymore interactions with her, he would realize that she too was only merely tolerating him, so there was no point in even trying. 

Walking back into the building, he decides to go back to his work, since that is all he will ever have.

**Author's Note:**

> In hindsight I realize I may have made the LexCorp employees a bit too dumb. Oops, I work retail as well, and I had a particularly bad day with my coworkers' lack of common sense. It seems that has bled into my writing. I decided to leave it though, since this is basically how Lex would view his employees. Next chapter it will be scaled back, I promise.


End file.
